


Breaking Things That I Should Keep

by narcolepticbadger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Chance Meetings, F/M, Outlaw Bandit, Romance, Unconnected stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4106959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcolepticbadger/pseuds/narcolepticbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. Each point of intersection, each encounter, suggests a new potential direction. </p><p>[I just met her, and yet I feel like something important has happened.] </p><p>A mostly-unconnected series of meetings for Outlaw Bandit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heat

**Author's Note:**

> Summary quote is borrowed, slightly modified, from the brilliant David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. 
> 
> All prompts come from tumblr.

“I’m not falling for that,” he told her, though his smile became ever-so-slightly strained as he turned his head to the side to mutter, “again.”

Regina continued to advance, smirking at the acknowledgement that she had bested him before, but her eyes were soft, her approach gentled into that of a lover, and he could almost believe she was coming to him honestly, that he was – at long last – meeting the woman within the huntress.

“I’m not interested in your gold. I _have_ gold,” she said, and she was close enough to make his fingers itch to smooth back the wayward hairs along her temple. He straightened and pressed his shoulders against the tree she had so effectively backed him into, fighting the impulse. “What I want is…”

Her words trailed off and hung between them. One hand explored his chest, and he laid his own overtop, pinning it to his heart. He examined the fine bones of her hand, her wrist, with his thumb, circling and stroking without destination until he was well lost in the labyrinth of her skin. A little shudder passed through them both – an unspoken completion of her sentence, for what she wanted was what he wanted as well – and the hairs on the back of Robin’s neck stood up, responding to the charge in the air around them.

“I have known your kisses to be costly, m’lady,” he said, but it was a poor warning, and she looked up, pleased, as she reached for the leather of his belt. His hips jerked forward as she worked the buckle, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, breath already hitching around the words he mumbled there.

Suddenly she pressed sharply against him, taking him in hand, and he bit into the line of muscle just above her collarbone to keep from crying out. She moved underneath him, and he tried to apologize, smoothing over the area with his tongue, feeling the marks he had left on her. They would bruise, surely, and an errant lick of desire tightened in his stomach, made him even harder.

Not because he had hurt her, never that, but because she would be wearing something of _his_ under her simple linen shirt, a secret only he was privy to. He left the reddening skin along her collarbone in favor of the curve of her jaw, softening it with kisses that broke into groans as she teased him.

Her rhythm hadn’t faltered during his ministrations, and now she spoke directly into his ear.

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me by name?”

He tipped his head back against the tree, struggling to keep his eyes open while he chuckled. With some effort, he landed a hand in her hair, pulling, and levered her head back until he could find her mouth. She nipped at his lower lip, paying him back in kind, but they were both too impatient to play, deepening their kisses until they were stealing the very breath, the very sight, from each other.

Robin pulled back on the verge, needing to brace himself against both Regina and the tree for strength, to blurrily answer her question.

“At least once more, m’lady.”

 _Always once more_. Her grip shifted again, and he was left saying her name every way he knew how as he shook under her touch, finally sliding down the length of the tree into half-collapse at its base, raw from more than the bark that had scraped through the thin material of his shirt.

Regina had fallen with him, and now she set about freeing herself from the tangle of his lap – not unkindly, but he was loath to let her go so soon, and he gathered himself just enough to pluck at her hand as she rose.

She came back to him willingly, slicking his hair back to press a kiss to his forehead, running a fingertip through his stubble, smiling at each shiver of pleasure she drew out of him.

When he tried to bring her closer, she clicked her tongue against her teeth and fisted her hand in his shirt, holding him in place while she ducked away.

“Save some for next time, Hood.”

He listened to the crunch of her fading footsteps, and slowly he came back to himself. He fixed his belt and tunic, sucked at the welt on his lip where she had bitten him, and began to inventory his pockets.

True to her word, his (it was a term he used loosely, he would admit) gold was untouched, but he was missing the bit of bent wire he kept for tumbling locks and a silver ring he had often used to masquerade as a member of the nobility.

He had long stopped trying to understand why Regina insisted on collecting him piecemeal when they both knew he yearned to give himself wholly into her keeping.

He knew the way of thieves.

He would pay whatever price she asked of him, in coin or blood or kisses, and steal his share in return.

(In the deep of night, when he had lost all hope for a peaceful sleep, he remembered her command too well: _You heard me. Take it off._ )


	2. Hurt

( _If I ever meet _Robin Hood_  in person, the only thing he gets is a  _broken nose__.)

* * *

 

They dragged him to the tavern, insisting on a rare night of celebration in light of the job they had just completed, a job that had required weeks of planning and a not inconsiderable amount of risk and luck for everyone involved.

Amazingly, it had all gone off without a hitch, and Robin, defenseless against their joy, chuckled and agreed that they had earned a few hours of revelry.

His men appropriated three tables and pushed them together, casting aside their bows and cloaks and responsibilities and talking over each other, each man determined to buy a round for the company on some unfortunate lord’s dime.

This was how Robin had accumulated half a dozen pints in less than an hour.

He tried to wave them off, arguing that one of them had to remain reasonably sober, that he just wasn’t in the mood, that he was their leader and _you’ll do as I say, John_ , but the more he protested, the more they laughed, and the hoard at his elbow continued to grow until it near crowded him off of the table.

He sipped slowly through one pint, then another, and smiled as his men told stories he had heard a hundred times before, each wilder and more embellished than the last. He loved them all, these men who had become better than brothers to him, but, _gods_ , his body ached for quiet after the day they’d had, and quiet seemed to be the one thing they had no intention of giving him.

Their voices rose into a collective roar as the evening progressed, tempers flaring and extinguishing quicker than he could track, ribald jokes flung back and forth, songs started and forgotten partway through. At least one broken glass crunched underfoot, and he considered it a small mercy that no punches had been thrown. Yet.

He caught the eye of the proprietor, a stern grey-haired woman called ‘Granny,’ and shot her an apologetic look, only to be met with a dismissive shrug. They were good business, it seemed to say, and they would be welcomed as long as they drank more pints than they dropped.

No sympathy for him there, and so Robin resigned himself to a long, lonely night of watching his men’s high spirits dwindle into snores, their heads dipping to the table in turns until it came time to settle the bill and herd them, staggering, back to the camp.

The drink was just beginning to loosen him up, canting in the sides of his vision, when a relative hush fell over the table. All of the men in the tavern seemed to crane in the same direction, focusing on the back of a woman who had just entered, who slipped through the mess of tables as if she couldn’t hear the whispers, the drunken buzz, that followed at her heels.

She was dressed plainly enough, and Robin thought little of her – aside from Granny, women were uncommon creatures in these parts, and any man in his cups would fixate on anything that moved – until she turned around, shaking her hair away from her face.

It wasn’t the eyes that caught him, though they were lovely, or the mouth, or the other countless details his mind tripped over as he took her in, but the unexpected familiarity of the woman that left him half-stunned.

He had never met her before, but he _knew_ her, of that he was sure.

Some of the younger men, Will at their center, were gesturing towards her, egging each other on, until Robin placed his hands on the table, drew himself up, cleared his throat.

“Sorry, lads, I believe this round is mine.”

Will looked devastated at this announcement, and John choked on his ale, fighting to swallow for a moment before he reached over to cuff Robin on the shoulder with a broad wink. He almost missed Robin entirely, swatting at the air beside him, and would have pinwheeled off the bench if Much hadn’t grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back.

Robin’s head swam a bit more than expected when he stood upright, and there was a definite swagger to his step as he approached the bar, angling up to the woman and resting an arm beside hers on the wood.

“It’s Regina, isn’t it?”

Despite the phrasing, it was a statement that he made, confident in his naming of her, and he read his answer in the way her shoulders tensed, her body taut as a snare as she studied him in turn. She looked at his hands first, and he uncurled his fingers slightly, showing himself unarmed, and her eyes traveled up his chest, over his chin, to settle most disconcertingly on his own.

“Who wants to know?”

She wore the same fierce scowl as the girl on the posters – _Regina Mills, wanted for crimes against the crown: murder, treason, and treachery_ – but it was the flat coarseness in her voice, deeper and richer than he had expected, that reminded him he was dealing with one of his own kind, an outlaw.

“You have nothing to fear, m’lady,” he hedged, wondering if she had guessed at his identity too. They had certainly graced enough posters together, papering trees and tavern doors throughout the kingdom, though the sketches did neither of them any favors – she, especially, was underserved by the severe lines of her portrait, he thought. “You’re among friends here.”

She huffed and turned away, bending further over the bar to flash two fingers at the barman. The gesture was efficient and oddly attractive in its sureness. She was at-home here, so much so that he found it strange she had managed to elude him thus far, sitting under his nose for gods knew how long.

He was running his tongue over his lip, thinking, when she shifted against the bar. She didn’t look at him, spoke down to the wood and her fingers tapping out a frustrated rhythm there, and there was a kick of anger in every word.

“ _Friends_? You almost got me killed.”

Her other hand tugged at the fur along her collar, revealing a pale curve of shoulder and a raised not-quite-scar, the width of his finger, that cut across the side of her neck. Before he could challenge her, she turned from him again and flicked another sign to the barman, asking him to hurry.

Robin was at a loss. He certainly hadn’t put that mark on her himself (and he would remember shooting at a creature like her, he sincerely hoped) and could think of no other occasion when his actions would have endangered her.

He stood awkwardly behind her, unsure if he should try to make amends for whatever she blamed him for or if he should retreat and let her alone with her grudge. Let them be rivals, if that was what she wanted.

He searched the room, ducking a glance behind him, and wondered who Regina’s second drink was meant for. Some other person of questionable repute. Some other man. It had to be, and yet he could see no one waiting for her return. _Perhaps she is planning to throw it in my face_ , he thought, and had to clamp his teeth down on the amused smile that was threatening to overtake him.

He leaned down to match her height, deciding to treat her as he would any other thief whom he had wronged, and clapped a light touch to her back.

“Come. Let me buy you a drink.” 

Her head whipped up before he could react and drove, powerfully, into his nose with the kind of sickening _schunk!_ that had people two tables over shuddering. Vision knocked black, Robin almost lost his footing as he reached up to stem the flow of blood that was already drenching the neck of his shirt.

He could see Regina through his hands, rigid and wide-eyed and caught in the middle of a gasp, one hand creeping up to cover her mouth in the kind of exaggerated horror that would be funny, he was sure, in any other situation.

“Oh, _no_ , I didn’t mean…it was an accident, I swear I…I –”

Her words were barely audible over the rush of blood in his head, the throb that he could see at the edges of his vision, and, with a sudden drop in gravity that made his stomach whirl, Robin realized that he very much needed to be sitting down now.

She reached for him, trying to help, and he reflexively flinched away from her touch, stumbling against the bar before he found his legs again. She shrank back as well, all but wringing her hands, and he wanted to reassure her that, despite all appearances, he was _fine_ , but the words came out thickly, mouthed through blood, and he had to spit the mess to the ground before he could continue, coughing out all he could think of to stop her from looking at him like that.

Like all fights that ended in bloodshed, this one caught the attention of the room, and his men came crowding with shouts of _Robin!_ (and her eyes settled on his then, quicker than a shot, and she looked a young and wild thing) and hustled him through the kitchen to be seen to by Granny.

She pushed and prodded at his face without the least thought of being gentle, cleaning away the blood and remarking on his fast-blooming bruises, and he wasn’t sure he would ever forget the grating sound that happened inside his head when she re-straightened (more or less) his nose.

He emerged from the back rooms feeling drained and intent on putting an end to this day as quickly as possible. He would just slip a word to Will, charging him with seeing everyone home safely, then –

Oh, he _would_ have, if Regina hadn’t been sitting there, in the midst of his men, apparently being regaled with tales of every scrape Robin had gotten himself into, every scar that marked his skin.

He loved his men like brothers, but sometimes he wanted to _kill_ them.

Regina had clearly been installed at their table against her will, staring a bit uncertainly at the glass in her hand while each man tried to drown the others out. He longed for bed, but there were other things he longed for too, and he was not so heartless as to leave her in the company of men _this_ inebriated.

“Determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you, m’lady?” he asked quietly as he took his place on the bench beside her.

“You’re becoming quite the legend,” she whispered back, smirking a little, though her brow furrowed as she studied his face, lingering over the painful swell of his nose and the shadowy bruises that underscored his eyes.

Her fingers twitched against her glass, and he thought she might reach for him again (wondered what that gentler touch would do to him), but she gestured to the bottle of whiskey in front of her instead.

“I thought you could use something a little stronger tonight.”

“Aye,” he agreed, taking the second glass, needing strength for _something_ that had nothing to do with the visible injuries she had inflicted, knowing-but-not-knowing that she had hit him deeper than that, broken him in other ways – a rabbit caught in the snare of her body from that first, fraught meeting of the eyes.

There was a tilt to her head that told him she knew what strength he needed.

(That she needed it too.)

“I _am_ sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, and he couldn’t resist digging at her. “I had it coming, apparently.”

She traced the raised line on her neck, and there was no bite in her this time. “I may have overreacted about that.”

“I’d like to hear the story someday.”

She smiled up at him, secretive and delicate and utterly charming. “You will.”

They sipped at their whiskey, and he listened to her laugh at John’s telling of the time they had emptied the Queen’s stables and nearly been stampeded flat in the process, each mishap leading into another until even he couldn’t understand what story John was trying to tell anymore.

He could feel Regina gradually growing restless beside him. She had not bargained for such an eventful night, after all, and, there was no reason for her to stay if she was wanted elsewhere. When a few of his men began stripping off their shirts to show off particularly impressive or gruesome scars, he reluctantly leaned in to tell her so.

“No one will notice if you slip out now, m’lady.”

“Ah, Robin, ye can’t be letting this one go so easily!” John boomed from across the table, and Robin cursed his timing, wondering how it could be possible that ten pints of ale had _improved_ the man’s hearing. “She’s better in a fight _and_ prettier than ye – right, lads?”

No one else paid him any attention, but Robin swore his saw Regina’s cheeks color as she raised an amused eyebrow at him. His own face felt hot, and he hoped that his bruises had darkened enough to hide the flush that was spreading there.

“Thank you, John,” he said wryly, feeling Regina shift off of the bench and make for the door and trying not to watch her, not wanting to know if she would look back at him or not. “You know just how to make a man feel special.”

A slight draft was all Regina left behind, and his men carried on, undisturbed, with their boasts and slurred stories. Try as he might, Robin could not call his focus back to what John was saying or what Will was drawing in the air.

He fiddled with the bottle of whiskey, ran a finger around the rim of her glass, imagining a hint of warmth where her lips had settled. The pain of his nose was dulling now, like a fire burning low – a distraction, nothing more, from another pain he could not place. It was a wounding or a healing or something in between, something _woken_ in him, roaring into being under her touch.

(The path of an arrow shaft along her neck, the crook in his nose, and, no, they would never be friends.)

In the beginning, if she was to be believed, he had nearly killed her.

In the beginning, she had half-killed him, too, and he would spend the rest of his nights begging her to return and do a thorough job of it.


	3. Seek (I)

They hunted together sometimes.

Neither could agree on exactly how it had started (she would say that he had set his traps too close to hers, that that particular stretch of forest was _her_ claim alone, and, at their first meeting, she had spat the word _thief_ at him with a vehemence that surprised them both), but it continued week after week, a quiet ritual they had fallen into and made no effort to break.

She would find him somewhere along the northern ridge, hardly more than a shadow in the cold morning light, as he made his rounds among the traps they now shared. He never stirred at her approach, never looked up from his hands re-setting a wire or cutting free whatever rabbit or weasel had been unlucky that day, and perhaps that was why she kept coming back.

It was business between them. It was _this wire wants mending_ and _give me a hand, here_ and no questions that tried to pin her down, no wondering who she was or what she was running from.

They spoke of little outside the practicalities of the hunt, learning each other through gestures instead: pointing out tracks, signaling as they stepped up to take their shots at the animals that tried to flee them, dividing up game by weight and need by nudging it towards each other.

She had called him _thief_ far longer than necessary, noticing how it made him suck in his cheeks every time as if he was holding in a laugh.

And then, one day, watching him from the corner of her eye as they stalked after a ringneck she had clipped across the wing but not killed, she asked, “What should I call you, then?”

He smiled, revealing dimples, and she turned her head just a fraction more to view them properly.

“Robin.”

“Robin,” she repeated, feeling out the word. _Of course_. She walked faster, rolling her eyes and muttering just loudly enough for him to hear, “You _are_ a forest boy, aren’t you?”

“Locksley, if you’d prefer.”

The pheasant tottered along in front of them, dragging its damaged wing, and she knelt to it, grasping it firmly under the breast and running a hand down its neck.

“No, it suits you somehow,” she said, shaking her head as she put the bird out of its misery with a practiced flick of her wrist. “ _Robin_.”  

He waited three more weeks before he asked for her name in return, and she had to say it twice, louder each time until she was almost snarling it, before he understood, before he nodded thoughtfully (as if he knew something about her now) and said, “Ah. Regina.”

It seemed an odd to her, and she wondered at the purpose of his asking until they collected their third rabbit of the day, one she had sighted and shot on almost pure instinct, a sort of frisson thrilling through her chest and down her arms as she lowered her bow.

Robin crouched over the animal, frowning, as he removed the shaft and examined the body.  

“Have you checked your draw recently, Regina? Your arrows are pulling left.”

(She _knew_ they were pulling left – did he think her an idiot? – and she had every intention of tuning her bow on her own time, when she _had_ time; of all things, he was choosing to pick apart a clean kill, a _good_ kill, even if it had taken the rabbit through the neck instead of the heart, and she would not stand for that, not for anything.)

“They are not,” she gritted stubbornly to his back, daring him to argue with her.

“Tighten your bowstring, and wax it.”

He dug into one of the pouches at his waist and tossed a lump of beeswax to her, carelessly, already turning back to the rabbit.

She fished the wax out of the dirt and clenched it in one fist, wishing it were something breakable.

“Come over here and make me,” she growled under her breath, and she was off, pushing through the undergrowth in a random direction and letting the low-hanging branches bounce and snap against her back. One caught her across the cheek, and the sting of it struck somewhere deeper, and, oh, it _burned_.

She had half a mind to leave him there, to leave him _her_ traps and _her_ part of the woods and start over on her own, but she was losing momentum, unsure where she was going, and when her path was interrupted by a runnel of water, less than a streamlet, she stopped beside it.

She sat on her heels and set her bow across her lap. The lump of beeswax had softened some in the heat of her fist, and she watched it change shape as she pressed it, turning it from cannonball to slivered moon and back again.

She plucked at her bowstring, listened to its subtle thrumming against her leg, and wondered if it was worth the bother to mend, if she should simply replace it. Needing to do something with her hands, she rubbed the wax up and down the length of the string and worked it in with her fingers. The motion soothed her, and, when she heard a rustle behind her, she did not react.

It was Robin, of course. She recognized his step, and thought that he was making his presence known only as a matter of courtesy to her, should she choose to flee from him again. Maybe she _should_ , but (she was tired of running) he was upon her before she could decide, strong arms wrapping around her own and gently loosening her grip on the beeswax.

“I don’t need your help,” she said, lifting her chin, and some part of him tickled the back of her head.

“I know.”

“Then _why_ – ”

He stayed quiet for a minute. When she had given up hope of getting an answer, she felt a sigh break from him, like he was struggling to explain himself. Like he didn’t know quite what to do with her.

“You asked.” There was a note of humor under the frustration. “You said – ”

“Shut up,” she mumbled, not needing to be reminded of what she had said.

She was surprised to find that he did. For a moment.

He adjusted his hands around hers and flicked at the bowstring.

“You’re a better shot than that. I’ve gotten quite used to unfouled game, you know. No torn muscle, no remnants of the shaft...”

She half-scowled where he couldn’t see it – “Spoiled” – but had to suck in her lower lip to control the smile that wanted to betray her.

She let him work at her bow, admiring the efficient play of his hands over the linen and wood (and the softness of his breath against her neck, the way he hummed tunelessly to himself), and, when it came time for them to part, she pushed all three rabbits back at him, telling him he had earned his keep.

(And, besides, she had a taste for something sweeter tonight.)


	4. Seek (II)

She was more than late.

Other days she had joined him at the second trap (never beyond the third), and Robin lingered past what was reasonable, listening for her bird-light step as he tied and retied the lines.

His fingers wore deep groves from the constant press of the wire. His wrists ached. He did not look up, not once, and he did not miss the watchful contempt of her companionship.

Still, he wondered.

He contemplated leaving her some game (he did not wish to be deemed _thief_ again) or a sign of sorts, questioning her absence, but to what end?

The woods would reclaim any kill he left unattended, and Regina was well-armed, sharper-sighted than even he – she would not thank him for his help when he offered no more than scraps.

He walked away, whistling, but the tune fell flat (it was not a lament) and wasted among the spires of trees.

…

He returned the next day, no longer concerned with adhering to the schedule _she_ had decided, and waited longer at each trap, sweating into his hands, into the groundcover, as the sun reached its full height.

The light of every passing hour mocked his patience, and Robin was forced to concede that his continued hunt was serving no purpose. He had meat enough for his men, and for the needy in the village, and it was high time that he made himself useful elsewhere.

A rabbit lay snared on the last decline of the ridge, blood beating so madly he could feel it through the wire, and Robin stayed his hand, freeing the creature with the very knife that would have claimed its life on another day.

It bolted, and he thought _run fast_ (oh, foolish heart) as he watched it disappear in search of its own kind, in search of safe ground.

Perhaps it would find its way to her.

…

His men had never been tidy, but the rate at which things around camp were going missing was becoming ridiculous.

Sacks of grain and coin seemed to move of their own accord, spitted fowl vanished before it could be laid over the fire, and he had lost a half-dozen new arrowheads in the last week alone.

It wasn’t simple carelessness anymore, he was sure, but none of the men would confess to taking a bit more than their share or to being more selfless than necessary when distributing goods to families in need.

“Something’s not right, Robin,” John had taken to saying, shaking his head woefully at the state of things. “The men have been hearing strange things these nights, and I’d wager there’s more to it than too much drink.”

“Aye,” Robin had sighed back every time, and left it at that.

Truth be told, he had felt the strangeness himself: a vague sense of warning that settled over him in the hours before dawn, when the quiet remained unbroken but bore the subtle edge of restlessness that worried him so.

He did not intend to be stalked within his own camp. 

“Don’t set a watch tonight,” he ordered as they circled for supper that evening. “I’ll take it myself.”

The announcement set off a chain of whispers around the fire, and Robin scowled as he heard Will not-so-discreetly grouse, “And the first man to wander out of his tent for a piss is gonna get his cock shot off for his troubles, innit?”

“Are ye volunteering, Will?” John called from his seat, and Robin sought a more peaceful place to enjoy his stew as the conversation devolved into a mess of insults and jokes about codpieces.

Ale flowed, the fires burned low, and men began to retire in twos and threes before Robin selected his post for the night: a towering oak set behind the circle of tents. It wasn’t the best vantage point, actually, but it would hide him well, and he was curious to see what would wander into camp if there were no obvious reasons to fear discovery.

It was a gradual process of settling. Even tucked into the widest fork of the tree, the bark bit through his clothing and his quiver lodged uncomfortably against his shoulder blade. He’d hardly be able to draw his bow if it came to that, but, then again, he wasn’t _planning_ on shooting anything out-of-hand.

He had brought a length of flax to twist into new bowstring while he waited, determined not to be lulled by the sounds of men turning in their sleep below. It was its own kind of lulling – the rhythmic work of his fingers over the threads, the moonlight that cast everything in shades of blue, the occasional whip-crack of a log falling to pieces in the embers they had left, but it was one Robin was used to, one that kept his senses alert even as his mind started to drift.

He had given up his last piece of beeswax and forgotten to borrow another from John, and eventually his hands tired of spinning, so he tucked the half-finished string into a pocket and sat quietly, breathing through the ache of his back and thighs.

Another branch snapped, a sharper, thinner sound than fire made, and Robin tensed, watching the treeline to his left to see what (no animal was this incautious) emerged.

Wind ghosted over what little exposed skin it could find, raising goosebumps, and then it was gone, an exhale that seemed to calm the entire forest.

His pulse slowed, the tension eased out of his limbs when he could no longer sustain it, and he thought that perhaps he had been mistaken after all.

And then: a peek of a small, hooded figure inching inwards, dappled by light and shadow and wholly familiar though everything about her appeared canted slightly, as if he were watching her through darkened glass.

Robin felt for the branch below him, barely testing his feet on it before he dead-dropped the rest of the way. He landed hard, the momentum carrying him to his knees, but even stumbling he was in no danger of losing her.

She heard his approach, clearly, since she made for the trees, but his legs were longer and she wavered – he was desperate to catch her, and she was desperate in another way, one he didn’t see until she flinched under his hand.

“Regina? What are you –”

She turned into his touch, the hood falling back as she swayed against his arm, and he could see that she was barely keeping her feet. Her lips parted but nothing came out, and then her eyes were rolling back to white and she was crumpling.

He dropped his bow in time to get his arms around her and hefted her over one shoulder, and he could feel the fever kindling in her despite the layers between them. She was a slight woman, but muscular, and already he could tell she was too light against him, starved from whatever sickness had befallen her, and he tried not to think of the interluding days that had led them here: he, drifting, and she, burning.

He pinged his hand against the taut side of John’s tent, their old signal, and the man’s snores abruptly ceased.

“…Robin?”

“Bring Tuck, quickly,” he said without looking back and continued to his own tent, laying Regina over his bedroll as he struck life to the lantern in the corner and blinked hard into its unshuttered light.

She was still but for the rise and fall of her chest. Robin went to her, kneeling, and brushed a hand across the dry heat of her forehead. High, but not mortally so, he thought  and hesitated a bit more – counting her breaths, trying to will them into regularity – before he began to unwrap her furs, bringing in more air.

They were damp with sweat and something darker, and by the time he was done freeing Regina’s arms, his fingertips were marked with blood. He followed the trail back to the crook of her arm and peeled away the sodden cloth there, feeling his face tighten, his teeth grind, at the sight of torn flesh.

Perhaps she had tried to bleed out the infection herself, or wanted to obscure the original wound (it was animal, this act, though he knew of no beast that branded its enemies save the Dark Queen – it was _inhuman_ , still) but the ragged cuts needed stitching and more, if they were to beat back the red lines reaching upwards for her heart.

He sat solemnly, sometimes sweeping his thumb over her forehead when she – _he_ , damnably – needed soothing, until Tuck arrived with his bag of medicines and steered him aside, asking for room to work.

“What does she need?” Robin asked, wanting to do more than pace.

“Goldenseal, roots and leaves. Clean water.”

He set John to stirring up the ashes to boil water while he gathered the plants (and lavender and calendula besides) and returned, hovering at the flap of the tent until Tuck dismissed him with a curt _thank you_.

He joined John at the fire to warm his hands, but the heat was unwelcome, nauseating in the context of the night. He fell to pacing and had two fistfuls of slender cedar branches to cut into arrows when Tuck fetched him back.

Regina would be fine, he said, given rest and time and a bit of luck. He left herbs and instructions for various teas and balms, pausing after each one for Robin’s nod of comprehension.

Robin waited for the questions to start – how did he know this woman, what had she run from? –and he had the answers for none of them, but Tuck simply slipped out into the darkness, trading rumors with John over a drink by the sounds of it.

Robin pulled a low stool to Regina’s side to resume his vigil (there was no sleep in him), finding the flowers in his chest pocket and twisting their stems into a hapless little bouquet to nestle by her head.

A ward, of sorts, or a peace offering.

(An invitation to _stay_.)

Curls of wood piled at his feet as he worked, straightening each branch and whittling notches for the fletching. His gaze wandered to Regina less and less as he built to a rhythm, and it took far longer than normal for him to realize that she had awoken at some point, watching and waiting for him to catch on.

Her eyes were clearer (they had color now) and held nuances of pain and wariness in their depths, and he answered the question she couldn’t ask.

“You fainted straight into my arms,” he said, keeping his concentration on the knife in his hands and making his voice as light as he could bear. “You know, you already had my attention. You didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

She said nothing, but he thought he heard the hitch in her lungs, the breathless break in her armor that meant – well, he would not guess about those things. Not with her.

“You could have come to me.”

That one stuck on its way out, because she _had_ come, just not in the way he wanted her to.

She shifted on the ground, twisting away from him, and it was only then that he saw she was crying, pulling into herself when she couldn’t find the strength to escape her nest of blankets.

In him, in delirium, in memory – did it matter which? – she recognized something terrible.

He dropped to the ground beside her, letting her struggle in his hands (she tired too quickly) until he could settle her again. She was limp and spent and yet her eyes would not leave him, and he discovered his voice once more, word catching after word until he was telling the kind of stories all children knew ( _there was a clever wolf, and lonely_ ). He kept talking, long after sleep claimed her – talking as he rearranged the blankets around her, talking as he gently cleaned the tear lines from her cheeks, talking in nonsense and metaphor and confession-whispers where she could not (help but) hear it.

There were things she must know, things he needed to tell and tell and tell.

His voice began to break near morning, his men already rattling out of their tents with less-than-hushed greetings, and John brought him a cup of pitchy coffee without comment.

He spent the rest of the day hoarse, traveling from Regina’s side to the fire and to the woods more often than he wanted, and he felt the stares of his men, the interrogation that never came, and blessed them for knowing that this was not the time.

He paused in a bluebell wood to pick new flowers, muttering, “One of Tuck’s balms,” when they looked at him in askance, only for them to start gathering their own handfuls and for Will to slip off somewhere and bring back primroses, shrugging as he offered them to Robin.

“Good for, uh, chafing, yeah?”

He tied together another small bouquet, laid it above Regina’s pillow (oh, foolish heart) with the first, his own little row of sacrifices – of askance.

He had to laugh at the expression on John’s face when he stepped back outside: the camp was transformed, winking with bluebells in every corner, and he had never met a spring, a wakening, such as this.

…

It was two days of Regina pretending to be unconscious every time he came to her, and two days of waiting until she _was_ asleep to check her wounds and cup her forehead and watch her slowly regain color.

He learned to leave the necessary teas at her side and walk away, collecting the empty cups later.

He learned her tastes too, and apples became an afternoon routine for them: he would sit against the center tent pole and slice an apple in his hand, cutting away seeds and core and dividing the segments between them. He set her portion carefully on the ground and pretended not to see the hand that crept over for each one as they ate in silence.

On the third day she surprised Robin by pushing up on her elbows and accepting the fruit straight from his hand, letting her fingers rest in his for a moment before pulling away.

She surprised him even more by sitting up fully (and he shifted against the pole to make room for her, flexed every muscle in the hands that still couldn’t hold her as he yearned to, as she leaned into his shoulder for support) and selecting another apple. She took the knife from his unresisting grip and peeled the skin into a long, unbroken snake, halved what remained, and flicked the seeds out before giving him his share.

“I’d like…” she began, looking down at the apple skin in her lap, worrying at it until it tore, and then faltered, as if there were too many wants to name.

“Fresh air?” he supplied, gesturing outside, and she nodded, dragging herself upright and away before he could help, and he felt the loss (deeper than heat) immediately.

He caught her in the doorway and raised the flap for her, and she blinked in the sunlight, her whole face scrunching as she took everything in.

Someone had been renewing the bluebells every day, and little enclaves of dandelions and wild garlic had sprouted up among them, and Robin wondered what meaning his men had ascribed to each of them to explain their presence. The few that remained in camp kept a respectful distance or retreated into their tents, and Regina and Robin were left alone with the fire.

She sat on a low, wide log, sinking down with the kind of boneless gravity that suggested she found even a few steps taxing. He sat next to her, left bare inches (he could count them, the small measures that kept them separated) between her leg and his.

“Your men like flowers.”

“Superstitious lot, they are,” he said, chuckling fondly. “Perhaps that’s why we’ve been having such luck with rabbits this week.”

She hummed in acknowledgement and reached out to snag a bluebell that had fallen out of its bunch, winding it thoughtfully between her fingers.

“You should take care on the eastern border,” she said, and he did not miss the way her hands clenched or the shiver that jostled her shoulder into his. “The…animals are venturing further afield, becoming more bold.”

He tucked the ends of his cloak more firmly around her, stilled her hand from shredding each bluebell head into pulp and held on (she didn’t protest), wondering at how small she was, and how unbreakable.

“I shall.”

…

The next morning his collection of hapless bouquets was gone, and she along with them.

He awoke to her blanket tangled over his legs and imagined the warmth in it was hers (theirs), just now gone.

He had known, he had known all along how this would end.

But there was something beside his bedroll, a disturbance in the flat plane of dirt as if something had been written and rubbed out, again and again.

She did not leave words but an arrow pointing north, and in all the thousand thousand ways of the world, this was all the direction he required.

( _I’d like you to finish your story_.)

( _I’d like you_.)

( _I’d like_.)


	5. Flight

He thinks his feet are pounding faster than his heart, a _thwip-thwip-thwip_ that kills all feeling in him, and he’s flying and falling in one.

Root over fern over stone.

He stumbles through their shifting patterns, remembers a magician’s trick he once saw _(watch closely now)_ – a disappearing woman, a patched cloak in green and grey, a word invoked by the crowd – but he sees only Regina in his mind _(the axe falls)_ and knows that he will not stop until he reaches her, until he reaches the place she has never invited him into and bids her to run.

Even then he will not stop.

He realizes his hand is empty. Stinging. He has lost his bow somewhere, and in another lifetime he would have turned back to reclaim it, but it is done, it is done, and he will suffer himself to be less-than-whole if it means he can find her in time.

The light is failing – the _sky_ is failing, and falling – when he crests the last incline and spots her tree-made-house, and her beside it.

She is gathering wood, arms heavy with it, and how he wishes that would be enough. They can torch the entire forest, a thousand forests, and still the darkness will come.

No need to bury themselves in the earth’s ashes first.

The Queen must be the one to choke them down. He still has teeth, he still has fists, he still has _her_ , and he will not be swallowed so easily.

He takes Regina by the arm, spilling kindling down their fronts _(they will set themselves on fire)_ , and the way she looks at him is sharp enough to cut. She is rigid against him, resistant.

“The Queen,” he pants, by way of explanation. “She’s coming with everything – everything she has, for you.”

Her eyes dart over his shoulder, as if she expects an army to spill over the crest behind him: a willful blindness.

“Regina, we haven’t _time_ ,” he presses, trying to back her into the line of trees that still shows some daylight overhead, kicking at her feet when she doesn’t move with him.

She stares at his chest, head shaking and shaking. “I’m done running.” She rips her arm from him and sweeps it angrily around them. “You think there’s something out there for me?”

He wonders that she cannot hear the thunder _(his heart)_ , that she will damn them both before she chooses to take what stands before her. He knows the path that will safeguard them. They must run – she _must_ live – and even when that proves not enough, it is kinder to die on one’s feet, fully feeling lungs and blood and sweat, fighting for a last step.  

He tilts her chin, gentle though it kills them both, and tells all.        

“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

Her eyes are glass, cradling water, and when a drop falls to wet the scar he has never kissed _(he will hunger for nothing else, forever)_ on her lip, she is ready.

They beat out a new rhythm, a broken one, but the pieces fall together anyway: her sweat on his skin, his breath singing to her blood, her image firmly held in his eye.

The ground drops out beneath them, and they are airborne, safe within the drape of his cloak, safe within the draw of her arms, and he bends his head to whisper into her while they disappear.

_(Watch closely now.)_


	6. Kindred

An  _Anne of Green Gables_ -flavored chapter, though you don't have to be familiar with Anne to understand it!

* * *

 

She ran on instinct, on knowing the less-traveled footpaths of the woods as clear as her own veins were mapped under skin, and she ran with the baying of hounds filling the moment of flight between every down-stride, unlucky to have chosen this day, this afternoon of fox-ready huntsmen, to mount another raid on the treasury vaults.  

Regina moved steadily downhill, bound for the river, until it was momentum hurtling her forward more than her legs and the water lay open to her below. It flowed quick, and she would have groaned if she could spare the breath, for she had been aiming for shallows, for an easy crossing to throw off the chase, and she had found its depths instead.

She was tired, flagging now, and she couldn’t chance swimming when she had no strength to keep her sense of direction or hold her head above the waterline.

The dogs had fallen behind, the sound of pursuit faded but not gone, and Regina didn’t have time to change course, not while she was caught up in a jarring, unstoppable sprint to the bottom of the last slope.

The toes of her boots dragged against the ground when she hit the flat edge of the riverbank, and she listened, tried to guess the surest course to safety by light and sense alone, all the while scanning and scanning for something she could make use of.

She spied it, then: a skiff, the kind favored by local fishermen, tucked and tethered to a dock so slight she thought it likely even the owner had forgotten where to find it.

She had come away empty-handed (and nearly  _un_ handed) from the vaults – surely it was not so great a crime to… _liberate_  a boat that, from the looks of it, no one would miss?

Hands fumbled with knife, and she sawed through moldering rope before steering the boat away from land. Regina was drenched to her knees immediately, then halfway up the thigh and struggling to keep her footing well enough to kick herself up and over, gracelessly spilling onto the wooden floor and nearly spearing a lung on the raised corner of the board nailed down for a seat.

She would be bruised all down her front tomorrow, but she felt only relief that the boat stayed well-balanced while the current carried it, quickening, downstream – away from the village, away from the party of hunters she had so unwittingly alerted to her presence, away.

She lay flat all the same, heart-down and small against the threat of arrows that could still find their way into soft wood or softer flesh, and – foolishly, perhaps – shut her eyes against the racing, reeling motion of both the river and her blood.

Everything was amplified by the curve of the skiff, and her heart and her lungs knocked together uncomfortably, seeming to echo from inside  _and_  outside her head, all directions drowned in the ceaseless beating.

Her clothes are sodden, heavy, and it would be a long walk back from wherever the waters bent or slowed enough for the boat to ground itself.

She was, for the moment, content to be at the mercy of the elements – and what could she do without oars to decide her destination? Cheek against wood, and still, still, hearing heightened with her eyes closed against the world, and then everything was wet, and she was choking on the rush of water up her nose and mouth.

Regina lurched upright, more than sodden, and the soft wood of the boat had been  _too_  soft, after all. Fully corrupted.

She was sinking.

There was nothing for it but to swim, the skiff submerging too rapidly to think about trying to salvage any part of it, and she slipped past the bow with arms outstretched to meet the flood.

The current tumbled her, not as badly as she had feared, but exhaustion and disorientation were powerful forces, and she couldn’t quite manage to stay afloat for more than a few breaths at a time.

The river was widening, calming somewhat, and she began to touch against bracken drifting across her path. Clutches of branches and high cattails hugged the shallower points of the riverbed, but she had no means to reach them, and she might have given herself up for lost if not for the spindly, fallen birch that stretched farther into the stream than anything else.

She would be able to catch herself against it with a little effort. If it bore her weight, she might have a fighting chance at clearing her head and resting her muscles and finding her way to a bank low enough to beach herself on.

She only hoped that the birch was more resistant to rot than her ill-fated skiff.

Regina timed the lunge correctly and clove to the trunk, which was blessedly slender enough for her to secure both arms around. The water still buffeted her legs, and her arms would tire, she knew, but she held tight and drew full breaths and felt absurdly grateful that she hadn’t been weighed down with stolen gold.

Resting her forehead against the tree, she thought of the chase that had driven her here, the sour taste of her misfortune almost scraping a laugh out of her.

_A most effective escape route, indeed_ , she considered wryly, and hummed in amusement she didn’t have the energy to voice.

The slap of the current was regular, lulling – and therefore dangerous, in its false placidity – but it was overlaid with sharper cuts of noise that pricked her ears (and the hairs at the nape of her neck) to attention.

And, straining to listen, she wondered if she had truly addled her brain or if that  _was_ the sound of a pair of well-handled oars approaching from her flank.

She angled her head to peek and cursed through her teeth at the sight of the man rowing towards her.

The simplicity of his clothing and the confidence in his strong, steady strokes might have tricked another eye into taking him for an ordinary fisherman, but she knew his face: even in the shadows cast by the wide brim of his hat, she knew the man who teased her so, who had  _humiliated_  her and then claimed friendship, and, oh, it would be better to drown than to suffer his company like this.

She leveraged herself against the birch, raised her head as far above the water as she could, and endeavored to look down her nose at Robin of Locksley as he propped an oar beside her and held himself fast against the pull of the river.

“Regina Mills,” he greeted, and she could kill him for the way his face, his very voice, crinkled with laughter. “Whatever are you doing?”

She would not meet his eyes, drew herself upright even though her shoulders balked at the movement, and spoke with as much flippancy as her situation would allow.

“I thought it quite obvious,” she said, watching the corner of his mouth lift in anticipation. “I’m fishing.”

Robin warred with a smile, lips twitching and subsiding as he held a hand out to her, and (she had to roll her eyes) it was an offering she could not refuse no matter how it wounded her pride.

“Ah,” he said while she settled across from him, the boat tipping seasickly under the surprise of her added weight. “How terribly unobservant of me.”

She stared at him, then: a flat, fierce look that dared him to press her further.

Runnels of water dripped from her hair, from her hands, down the hollow between her breasts, and she would liken it to a thaw if she wasn’t so damnably  _cold_. The heat of mortification came on slowly, and it was enough to hold her rigid, straight-backed and hard-nosed – but only just.

Robin maneuvered them away from the tree with a prod of his oar, watching her and the river in turns and waiting, it seemed, for her to break the silence.

She did.

“And you? Do you make a habit of searching the riverbeds for loose gold?”

Regina mistrusted his appearance, his garb so different from his usual hunting greens and looking like nothing so much as a disguise, and she wondered if he had played at reconnaissance today – or worse, if he had poached a job out from under her once again.

“I’ve found it’s the fastest way to travel south,” he replied evenly, but not without a glint in his eye that deepened her scowl. “And I doubt you could ask for better waters for trout fishing, wouldn’t you say?”

“If you must know,” she started, then wished she had bitten her tongue.

Robin pulled on the oars and made no answer, and she took the slack he was giving her with a jut of her chin.

“If you must know, I landed myself on the wrong side of a foxhunt and made to escape with some fisherman’s skiff,” she said, and perhaps it was the shiver of wind over her wet clothes and skin that chilled her voice so. “Which promptly sprung a leak and stranded me as you saw.”

“And yet the fox lives to see another day,” he said, nodding his head towards her with the kind, open smile he had first tried on her after claiming credit for the heist she had pulled on the treasury  _last_  year, the one that had stirred nobles across three counties into an uproar and caused  _his_  name to be immortalized in song and story and whispers of caution.

If he was waiting to be thanked, if he thought this was some kind of  _rescue_  of fair maiden that would win him her favor, he would be sorely disappointed.

“You needn’t carry me farther than the nearest mooring.” She gestured to a point on the approaching bank at random, hoping it would indeed prove low enough for Robin to draw against. “That one will suffice.”

He followed her command, and she was half out of the boat the moment it hit the shallows, gritting into rock and sand.

Robin moved efficiently, though – she expected nothing less from a thief, but she cursed him all the same – and he hauled the boat out of the tow of the river and fell in at her heel before she could stagger away.

“Regina, wait,” and he touched softly at her elbow.

She stiffened at his familiarity, at his continued presumption, but he outpaced her and outweighed her and seemed determined not to let her run this time.

“I should go while they think I’m drowned,” she muttered, looking down at the fingers that still lingered by her arm and trying to feel her old anger. “I didn’t need rescuing.”

His eyebrow quirked, but his hand dropped to rummage in a pocket and drew out a fold of parchment – one she immediately marked as a wanted poster commissioned by the Queen, having graced a number of them herself.

Her heart sank. (It should rage, but she had had too much disappointment in an afternoon to feel it like anything but a stone dragging her under.)  

“I found this in the village today. I thought it high time they revise the amount of the rewards they’re willing to offer for leading an outlaw to the noose.”

“You must be very proud – I’m sure your head is worth more than I’ll see in my lifetime.”

Regina backed from him, alarmed to find that she might cry (she wouldn’t, but) and desperate to be away, alone with her bruises and her embarrassment.

She mustered her parting shot and delivered it with a venom that shook around the edges. “Did they get the nose right this time?”

“No, no, you misunderstand – ”

He sighed, exasperated and earnest, one hand rising to pacify her as the other forced the parchment on her.

“ _Look_  at it,” he prompted, and she let her eyes fall, rotating the page until she could see it properly.

Two sketched faces stared back at her, Robin’s (and, no, they still hadn’t managed to fix his nose) and, though she could scarcely believe it, her own – given equal prominence and equal price with an unheard-of two thousand gold pieces promised for each of them, if brought to justice.

“It’s only a shame you’ve been lumped with me,” he said. “I suppose they don’t want to bankrupt themselves by paying out your full value.”

“Please. I would never expect to overshadow  _you_.”

Robin frowned and swept a heavy hand over forehead and hair, knocking back his hat and sending it to the ground in the process. He let it lie.

“Must we be rivals, Regina? The competition has made me a better thief, undoubtedly, but I think it would do us both good to work together.” Teeth dug into lip, and he flicked his eyes to her hopefully, persuasively. “Stir up some real trouble.”

“You…you  _betrayed_  me,” and it was not the right word, for he had not known her then, no trust had been broken, but she would not allow him rob her of the anger that had informed her every action for this long. “If you think coming to my aid – aid which was demonstrably unnecessary – today pays for that, you’re a fool.”

He exhaled, had the pluck to look regretful.

“I saw an opportunity for profit, and I took it, at your expense – as an outlaw is wont to do. Had I known it would have pitted us against each other thus, well, I never would have done it.”

“Why did you?” Regina asked, quietly, unable to let the moment pass without getting his answer, as unsatisfactory as it was sure to be. “It could have been…why me?”

“That job was the best I’d ever seen.” He was so serious, speaking almost before the words had left her tongue, and his eyes burned where they touched her skin. “And I wanted to meet the woman who had pulled it off.”

“By helping yourself to the reputation  _I_  had rightfully earned?”

“It seemed reasonable at the time.”

She shied back from him again, growling. “You think you’re so clever – ”

“Not clever enough by half,” he interrupted with a playful shake of his head. “Might I remind you of the time you brained me with the counterweight of my own booby trap and proceeded to take my winnings as your own?”

“Your skull’s so thick I wasn’t sure you even noticed.”

“Trust me, I noticed.”

“I should go.”

After a beat, he nodded, but he reached back into the bottom of the boat, rustling for something, and threw a bolt of flannel to her before she could turn away.

She was about to protest – she was not  _weak_ , despite the goose pimples raising themselves from neck to waist, and she did not need to be cared for like a babe – but Robin was already bent to shove his craft back into the stream.

“Keep it,” he called over his shoulder, splashing calf-deep through the current. “A fox needs a good disguise now, more than ever.”

And he was away, and she did not watch him leave.

For all they were not friends (never  _would_  be), there was something kindred in him, a wildness that brooked no forgiveness, and Regina understood that well enough.

She twisted the ends of the flannel in her fingers, wrapping it more securely around her, and trudged homeward – her step made a hair lighter, perhaps, by the creased bit of parchment slipped under her belt and the enveloping scent of pine she wore, sharp and sweet and deliciously within her grasp.


	7. Light(e)ning

Regina’s half-risen from a crouch, bow tucked into her side, when his hand catches against the crook of her arm and flexes, holding – it’s not a signal they’ve used before, but she can read its caution, its warning, well enough.

She sinks back immediately, whips her head to align with his, and searches, seeing no more through the trees than she had a moment ago, but dusk is falling, and she must be blind to something in the shadows, some man or beast that has pulled Robin’s eyes.

They have traveled far for the hunt today, only now crossing back into territory frequented by the guard, and it would be ruinous to be taken by surprise here – or taken alive.

She gestures to him in askance, an open spread of palm under lifted brow, and he leans in to breathe, “Wait.”

Another cock of the head, and she strains to follow, looking hard, until she feels his shoulders drop on a triumphant exhale.

“There.”

She sees no movement, nothing more than the burnt fizzle of a firefly or two over a stand of milkweed, but Robin rocks up on his feet and sets their cover shaking, no care for concealment now as he strides into the open and reaches through the air with hands cupped, arcing shut.

_Oh, for the love of –_

He’s cranked her pulse a few notches higher and squandered the last good daylight all in the pursuit of catching _fireflies_.

He turns and grins, so pleased with his discovery, and Regina can just make out a dart of light through the loose knotting of his hands. She has half a mind to throw her bow in his face and stalk off, let him find his own damn way back to the downs, but he’ll simply follow her and she prefers to be fully armed when he does.

So she stands and grinds her heels into the topsoil with more force than is strictly necessary as she walks to him, and his grin slips a little at the ferocity of her approach, as if only now realizing he’s wasting their time ( _her_ time) with nonsense.

“Are you quite finished?”

Her voice stays cool, not the heated lash it could be, and she uncurls with it, chin tilted up to him in a play of scorn. She means to look down on him. She measures no taller than the line of his shoulder, but she has defiance and anger enough to fill the extra inches, and she takes each one as her own. 

He bites his lip, dimpling even then, and refuses to be embarrassed, but he releases the firefly without a word. It clings at the base of his thumb when his fingers shift, lighting once more there, and then it flies, lost to the gathering dusk with the others, blinking in odd intervals.

“I couldn’t resist,” Robin says, all quiet and unapologetic, and she huffs, “Clearly,” in the same moment that he continues with a rather more wistful, “Reminds me of a simpler time.”

It’s unguarded, far more than he has given away before – and, perhaps, more than he intends – and she will have none of it.

(She does not know the meaning of _a simpler time_ , has no use for innocence while she still wears a beaver pelt at her waist and a half-bloodied quiver across her back, and she will not think on any moment but _this_ one, not for anything.)

But Robin is built for the study of things, he has always seen too much, and he reads her well, knows her silence for what it is.

“As a child, surely – ?”

The lick of laughter in him fades to something grave, a tightening of his mouth, and (if he pities her, she will hate him, irredeemably) she looks away.

“I did not have time for such games then.”

She watches through the screen of lashes at the corner of her vision, watches as his gaze drops to her hands and fights to keep them calm – empty, but seeking nothing. They are as rough and calloused (hard-won) as his own, but they weren’t always, and Robin sees too much.

“And now?”

She looks at him again, aware of the middling distance between them and how it no longer seems sufficient, and moves her shoulders carelessly: a shrug, or a challenge, and she can’t decide which she wants it to be.

Everything darkens by the moment, more shadow than dwindling sky now, and she can’t quite catch his expression when he steps away, wading deeper into the milkweed.

She is free to go on, she understands, but she will be doing so alone.

The earliest stars are already rearing overhead, and Regina itches to follow them, to pick the surest path back to camp while she can still tell buckthorn from bramble, but each breath spent in the choosing only roots her further, firmly in place until she scuffs through the milkweed herself, hardly knowing what she’s doing, and lowers to a crouch beside him.

Robin speaks without turning his head, and this is a signal she recognizes. “It’s like hunting.”

One firefly bobs around his ear, another tangles in the stalks in front of them, and he amends with, “Well, not really,” in that light, laughing way he has. “But the principles are the same.”

He waits a beat, intent, and drags his hands together just as the firefly sparks again, safely peeking through the space he has left between fingers and palm.

Speed and precision, yes, but there is delicacy where she has learned to strike hard, and it is small, so much smaller than a heart, but her mouth dries the same at the sight of it.

He holds clasped light between them, too dim to reveal more than the broad outlines of their faces with each pulse, but she imagines the soft set of his smile, and the night presses in just enough for her to answer with something akin to honesty.

“Except you let them go, in the end.”

Robin sends the milkweed rustling, flicking against the side of her leg, as he centers his weight, but his arms remain steady, and the firefly within his grasp blinks on, and on.

“There is that,” he says, and lets his palms fall open.

They both watch the firefly drift off, tracing its flight as best they can to the edge of the clearing, and, with Robin so distracted, Regina fixes her eye on the ones dancing within reach.

Tense, taut as a full draw on her bow, and then she relaxes, guides the nearest firefly towards the palm of her other hand and closes on it as quietly as catching a bit of dandelion fluff out of the air.

When she raises her eyes, he’s there, observing, dimples hollowing his cheeks again as if (he has seen gentleness in her, and wonders at it) he trapped the damn thing himself.

As if it was so difficult to hunt something and not kill it.

“Stand fast your ground, your quarry, and your aim,” she quotes, lips tipping into a smirk.

He gives his laughter full voice this time, and she looses her captive to the wind, so weightless she never knows its departure, and it’s one more star to light the path home.

They end up stumbling through the woods like drunkards, feeling along with clumsy, booted feet, and she can’t repress the thrill of satisfaction in her chest every time Robin runs himself into a root or groundhole and mutters a curse behind her.

He does, after all, only have himself to blame.


	8. Mending

Robin had been pushing them off for days, the vague misgivings of a body overworked, and always he had his reasonings at the ready: his legs ached, of course, because he had led the Queen’s black guards in a chase halfway across the county, and it was the unseasonable warmth that flushed his cheeks and dried his throat, sweat that made his fingertips slip from the bowstring before he had fully drawn. **  
**

Still, there was a layer of husk to his voice that couldn’t quite be explained by the smoke he breathed from the fire pit. The hearing in his left ear turned in on itself, most strangely, tuned to some internal sea that did nothing but unbalance him. His whole arm, more than his nocked grip, shook against the bow now.  

He began one morning by trapping his fingers in the knottings of his bootlaces, and only then was he forced to concede that everything was – _perhaps_ – not as it should be.

He was (more than) tired, and unsettled, and his bedroll was more welcoming than he could remember it being. He could spend _days_ in its comforts and not even bother to tend the fire because, surely, he was burning enough for them both already.

Tongue passed over cracked lips, and he was reminded that all his water skins were empty, run through the previous evening when he couldn’t seem to take in enough to sate him, and the word stuck there, lodged in his gullet, and drove every other thought out.

_Water._

He needed water.

He cursed himself for letting the supply run so low and rooted through the skins again, not daring to hope that he might have overlooked one in his haste, but there it was - one that still sloshed a bit at his shaking, and he pulled at the stopper with his teeth until it came free, tipping back to catch the liquid with his mouth only for the bag to fumble, to upend itself, at his chin and go spilling down his front.

He cursed himself doubly.

His thirst was now acute, the pangs in his throat desperate, and there was nothing for it but to trek to the stream, though the distance it required made him groan aloud - immediately regretting the action when it struck a match against his vocal cords.

Movement hurt, _breathing_ hurt, but Robin worked slowly to gather up water skins and string them across his back and over his shoulders, bow and quiver swept up with them because he had no eye for discernment any longer.

Telling himself that he’d had worse (this was nothing mortal, and it would pass, it would pass, he chanted to himself), Robin tied off his boots more carefully and set out over stones and roots that seemed to have reached up overnight for the way they caught at him.

He tramped along, minding his feet with such dogged concentration that the pounding in his head and the lurch of his heart gradually faded, harmonized, into a single distant beat.

Runnels of sweat marked his back, everything clinging to his skin, and he didn’t know how his body could spare it when his forehead was dry heat and his tongue kept poking to the corner of his mouth and failing to find any wetness there.

He was _starved_ for it, water - such a simple thing, the basest element, and why had he never seen its value like this before? He could dunk his whole head in the stream, revel in its clear coldness, its sweetness, and let it quell the dullness that was spreading joint by joint. He could drink enough to hold him for days, and after filling his skins again he’d be rich in it - not wasteful, no, he had learned that lesson, but a little hoard to keep at his side was just what he needed.

It would be (catching his toe on a rock as he sighed his anticipation) _heavenly_.

The crack of a particularly large branch beneath him surprised him into stopping, guilty foot still pressed to the white break of it, and his senses struggled back to order, abruptly aware of the forest again, and his place in it.

He had been moving incautiously, loudly, tracks laid clear behind him for all the minutes he had walked and leading directly back to his camp. And it might not matter so much, he thought (tried), as he wasn’t on the hunt and there was no evidence that the guards had ever ventured this deep before and he could bury his trail on the way back - the water was unbearably _close_.

He hadn’t been so reckless, really, and the stream would set him to rights again.

That stream… was proving rather more distant than he remembered, actually, and when _had_ autumn transformed the wood so thoroughly? Leaves thick under his boots, making a hellish racket every time he shifted weight, and the trees looked too open without them.

He squinted at the nearest stand of birches, trying to orient himself even though it was impossible - un _think_ able - that in his distraction he had strayed in possibly (entirely) the wrong direction.

The added burden of his weapons over shoulder had confused his steps, perhaps, and he had instinctively made for his favorite shooting grounds and missed the turn down to the water.

An extra minute of puzzling (swallowing past the hell of his throat, rough as sand) was all he needed to work out a new path, a shortcut, navigating by sun and shadow and the rough compass of his hand. He was now confident in his direction but wearied, plagued with hesitations, tiny rebellions in every muscle so that what might have been a pleasant amble downhill felt like fighting his way through strong currents of undergrowth.

His eyes were tearing, dazzled by neat shots of light through the trees, and there was pressure and pounding behind them he couldn’t rub away.

He was breathing harder than he should have been when he crouched under an elm, and it wasn’t the spot he had been working towards but it was closer, easier, and he could bloody well sit for a minute if it pleased him. The stream wasn’t going to wander off.

The whole world seemed to have taken on a pulse, pressing too close, and he couldn’t hear anything but waves, a shoreline he’d never seen and still -

 _“You make it sound like this was some epic - an_ odyssey _\- to find the rarest spring in the land,” Regina says a little too loudly, calling all eyes to her. “You’re not actually a young god tasked with impossible… impossible_ tasks _, you know.”_

_“I was ill, Regina. That’s kind of the point of the story.”_

_She leans forward, letting the table take on more of her weight, and jabs a finger in the general direction of his face. and it’s then Robin realizes what the slouch of her spine and her unexpected gregariousness means -- she’s drunk. Or at least well on her way to being so._

_“You’re telling it wrong.”_

_“Am I?” He’s amused despite himself, cocking his head towards her with new interest and a poorly-concealed smirk. “I suppose you could tell it better yourself, then?”_

_“You think I won’t?” Her eyes flash at the challenge, and Robin (thinking on broken noses and insults traded like blows and gold stolen out from underneath him) regrets rousing her, just a little._

_“No, no, trust that I at least would never underestimate the extent of your competitive nature,” he sighs. “But, Regina, I think even you must concede that this is my story.”_

_“Who’s to say your illness didn’t addle your memory as much as it did your sense of direction? Or do you deny that you would’ve ended up halfway to Arendelle if I hadn’t found you when I did?” She asks this last with a flare of triumph, and when the rest of the table breaks into raucous laughter Robin knows he’s hopeless to regain their attention._

_“Let her speak!” John calls, raising his tankard to salute their new storyteller, and the sentiment is echoed roundly by the other men._

_To which Robin concedes with a wave of his hand, and a deep swallow of ale, and a tight-lipped mutter that no one can hear: “Traitors, the lot of you.”_

...

Regina had been out since earliest light, moved not by hunger or the need for work but by a restlessness that drew her farther and farther from her hollowed tree as the sun climbed overhead. Her walk was aimless, as much as it could be for someone who had the better part of Sherwood memorized down to its boulders and rabbit-runs, and she followed the stream for its easy burbling, downhill and west and on until she had passed beyond what she thought of as _her_ section of the forest.

The trees thinned here, and she peered through them as if to pick her next direction on sight alone. There had been a blackberry bramble just over that hillock, she thought, one that had served her ripely over the summer. Too late in the season now, but she found herself cutting inland anyway, curious to see what remained - it was a silly thing, to think of some places as _friendly_ , but so she did - ears and eyes alert for company that was less pleasant than the stream.

No blackberries, as expected, but there was a comely patch of hellebore beside the bramble, and Regina knelt to examine the leaves and blooms. She knew less of herblore than she would have liked, but hellebore was spoken of widely by mothers and healers and fortune tellers alike. A cure for insanity, some said, or a ward against evil - or was it witchcraft, meant for invisibility and summoning demons?

The thought pricked her, and she shivered even in the sunlight, pulling her fingers back from the flowers. She did not hold well with superstitions, but hellebore seemed to bode ill for all its cunning prettiness.

She was still gathering herself when she heard a noise that was decidedly _not_ animal and stiffened immediately. No clanking of armor or stamping of horses, the usual markers of both black guards and passing merchants alike - no, more likely this was a traveler who had lost the path, and wouldn’t that be her luck, to have a stranger stumble upon her and by chance alone betray her to the Queen at last?

She crouched low on her heels, obscuring herself within the thicket, keeping both blade and wit at easy reach to deflect whomever might come her way. Her hand had crept to the hilt of the dagger at her waist without her noticing, but she was glad for its firmness and gripped it all the more fiercely as she waited.

More clumsy sounds, like one not accustomed to moving through the forest, and her head inched up despite herself, curiosity trumping caution, to better see what anomaly this was and whether posed any risk to her after all.

Oh, gods.

_Him._

Regina knew this man, had sketched rather unflattering portraits of his face on more than one occasion, and she released her hold on her dagger with a grumble of irritation as she watched him - Robin bloody Hood, rival bandit and professional pain-in-her-arse - be even more of an idiot than she had thought him capable of.

Robin was wavering his way through the forest, swaying, seemingly, to a bit of  music only he could hear and sending up a din while doing so that endangered _both_ of them if there happened to be any guards or passably observant lawmen in the area.

He was groping at the low-hanging elms and maples to keep himself upright as he walked, finally seeking a moment’s rest against one almost directly opposite her hiding place. His shoulders heaved with each breath, as though he had been outrunning something, as though he had staked his life on some reckless escape through the woods, and Regina kindled with fear again as she listened and puzzled and tried to guess from which directions the danger would descend.

She looked closer for blood on Robin’s clothes - he was moving like a wounded man, or a mad one, and she couldn’t account for it - and though she sensed now that something was very, very wrong, she was not yet willing to spring the trap by making herself known to him.

Instead she let one foot slide experimentally over a slender branch until it gave, snapping whip-quick, the kind of disturbance in an otherwise still wood that no outlaw would ignore for fear of his head.

Robin, to his credit, lifted his gaze immediately and swung about, hands feeling out weapons with instinctive certainty, but the moment was rather ruined as he continued to pull at the same arrow without ever once clearing it from his quiver. He gave up on that particular arrow after a number of unsuccessful draws and grasped again, this time missing his aim entirely and pulling at one of the many water skins looped over his shoulder with such force that he might throttle himself.

 _This_ was the famed Robin Hood who had hijacked so many of her carefully laid plans over the past two seasons?

“Unbelievable,” Regina muttered to herself as she watched him struggle, increasingly entangled in his hunting gear, and after a painfully long moment she sighed and pushed out of the bramble and (dagger half-unsheathed and ready) stalked towards him.

She was going to _help_ him - this nuisance, this outlaw who deserved nothing from her except a punch to his smirking jaw - if he didn’t force her to gut him first.

“Thief,” she growled, refusing to name him, and he blinked owlishly at her, unguarded in a way that made her nerves rise again.

And for the first time she thought that _thief_ didn’t ring like much of an insult at all, not when they were standing without the excuse of something to be won between them, not when she was one too, and that realization made her scowl all the harder.

“What the hell are you doing, thief?”

_“Professional pain-in-your-arse, am I?” Robin asks with an aggrieved huff that’s belied by the lightness in his eyes, and Regina stops talking long enough to shoot him a pointed look._

_“Not only in_ her _arse,” Will adds helpfully, and once again the whole table chuckles in agreement._

_“There are some other choice words I could use,” Regina says, and, oh, he loves to see her spark with danger like this,“and you needn’t sound so pleased about it.”_

_“You’ve caused me quite a lot of trouble as well. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about -”_

_“Oh, if we’re keeping score, you’ll find that I’m well ahead. Is there anything I_ haven’t _bested you at yet?”_

_Robin narrows his eyes suspiciously. “What definition of ‘bested’ are you using, if I may ask? I think I’ve proved myself more than capable of keeping up with you.”_

_“Says the man who gets tangled up in his own bow and quiver.”_

_John chokes on a mouthful of bread at her words, hastily coughing to conceal his laughter, and Robin bristles, baleful._

_“I did_ not _get tangled -” Regina arches her brow, and he’s forced to correct himself before she embarrasses him further. “Well, I_ did _, but you’ve been grossly exaggerating the extent of my, er, insensibility.”_

_“How would you know? You were completely delirious.”_

_Now it’s Robin’s turn to sit forward, laying his hands on the table like a winning set of cards. He smiles slightly, wickedly, just for Regina._

_“I’ll have you know I remember our meeting with utmost clarity, m’lady.”_

...

Regina had always been able to find him, unerringly - usually, to be sure, when he had the misfortune of pursuing something she had already decided was hers - and so he was not as surprised as he might have been to look up from the tree that supported him and see that it was her approaching.

She called him thief and threw more questions at him, and he was powerless to do anything more than stand and catch his breath, sickness and the sight of Regina at such a near distance warring with each other to thoroughly rob him of his senses.

Regina seemed to realize that he had not taken in a word of anything, and, frowning up at him, let the silence stretch on until she said, quite unconvincingly, “You’re scaring all the game away.”

The incongruity of the moment, and the way she she stared at him with something like concern was enough to finally shake Robin out of his breathlessness, out of his stupor. He gestured to the full sunlight around them and asked - rasped, really, “What exactly were you expecting to bag at this hour? A handful of squirrels?”

He winced at the terrible hoarseness of his voice and the pain that dragged out behind and imagined, for a flicker of a second, that Regina winced with him.

But she simply sniffed, disinterested in everything except volleying the insult back at him. “Certainly didn’t expect to find a grown man bumbling through the woods like a lost kit.”

They stood at an impasse, then, each trying to take measure of the other without betraying their purpose, and Robin should excuse himself, should make for the stream, but he didn’t know how to do any of that, overwhelmed just by the thought of the too-many steps involved in speaking again.

Regina frowned deeper now and suddenly (Robin lost track of her movements, of the world, as he blinked, blinked, blinked) was too close, rearing up on her toes to touch him. He was not _that_ much taller than her, but he found he liked being reached for, that unconscious strain towards him on her part.

She reached to his forehead and touched there, eyes widening at everything she felt, and Robin wanted to sink the whole of his weight against her fingers, her palm, for the coolness it brought him.

“You should be in bed,” she said quietly, and she didn’t let go.

He smiled down at her, and, then, unsure whether he thought it or spoke it: “You’ve gotten bold.”

“You should be in bed,” she repeated stubbornly.

Her hand traced downward, gently, to take him by the throat, dangerously close to that pulse-point that beat just below his skin, and still he made no move against her, stood fascinated, even though it defied every animal instinct that told him to fight.

Her fingers skated over his pulse and rested, probing, on the tender spots below his jaw, and he closed his eyes against her, weak for the feel of it, weak to submit to her will to explore him so intimately.

(How easy for her to slip the crook of her knife into him there and bleed him of his life, and it would be nothing less than he had asked for.)

“I’m fine.”

His protest would have been rather more effective if he hadn’t had to breathe in hard and swipe a hand quickly under his nose while he coughed, great wracking things that burned out his vision again and left him legless, and he was relieved to still be upright of his own volition, that eternity later, until he realized Regina was gripping him firmly under the elbow and leveraging him against the tree trunk to keep him so.

They were muscle-to-muscle, her thigh pressing above his knee, and Robin wanted to say something flirtatious, something about the positions they kept finding themselves in, but all he could manage was a weak croak for water.

She nodded, settled him better against the tree, her touch and voice barely penetrating the fog of his head and suddenly gone before he could call her back. Time passed uneasily - he might have fallen into a doze - until she was forcing his own water skin back into his hand and helping him lift it to his mouth and oh, _water_ , at last, cascading down his throat and over his chin faster than he could swallow.

Regina eased the container away from his mouth, ignoring his mumbled protests for more (and he did feel full-to-bursting, but _wanted_ all the same), and wetted her hand instead, running it over his forehead and into his head and down each cheek until he was shivering with relief and pleasure and not a little fever.

She had brought him water. He would marry her for that wonder alone.

(He hoped he hadn’t said that part aloud.)

 _Robin stops, having just said_ that _aloud, and for a moment he’s so discomfited he can only reach for his ale and drain the last fifth of it and determinedly avoid looking in Regina’s direction._

_“Well, man, what happened next?” someone down the table asks impatiently, and Robin becomes very aware that all the men have stilled, tankards neglected and faces slack with curiosity, and he has yet to answer to them._

_“I -”_

_“Nothing happened,” Regina breaks in with a vehemence that borders on threat, and Robin is glad for the men’s scrutiny to shift back to her. “Only a fool would waste time nursing her greatest rival back to health. And he would trust her to? Please.”_

_Will nodded at the sense in it, spearing Robin with a thoughtful glance - the man always got to the quick of things more skillfully than was good for him - as he did so. “Hard to argue with that.”_

_“But to leave a man in such a state… surely you don’t mean that’s the right of it?” John’s question stirs the men again, several pounding their fists against the table at the idea of such a betrayal, even of one’s enemy._

_But their eyes are alight with the excitement of the story, bobbing between Regina and himself as if they are indeed keeping score and settling their wagers on who will emerge as the victor, as the better bandit, this time around._

_“What, you want a turn at the story too, now?” Regina snaps at John before the discussion can devolve into a review of the Merry Men’s moral code. “Let me finish.”_

...

Water skin emptied, Regina levered him out of the trap he had made of himself and stood clear as Robin swayed back to his feet.

“Better?”

“Much.” Robin swept a hand through his hair and looked down, chagrined. “Aside from the rather large debt I have to settle with you now, which will undoubtedly bankrupt me if you have anything to say about it.”

She scowled at the jab, tossing the water skin at his chest and wishing she had something weightier (a stone, a boulder) to lob at him instead. “You say that as if you have gold to begin with.”

“Perhaps I should seek a new trade - one that pays more handsomely.”

“I hear mapmaking is a worthy business,” she agreed.  “Shame you can’t navigate two meters without tripping over your own bootlaces.

And though he opened his mouth to respond, Regina turned decisively on her heel and strode away, knowing that this time, _this_ time, he would not dare follow her, and she would be well and finally rid of that troublesome thief, Robin Hood.

_“...and that’s the last I saw of him.”_

_Regina is tracing a finger contemplatively around the rim of her glass. “For all I know he really did take up a career in mapmaking. Or maybe he was eaten by bears.”_

_There’s a beat of silence as the men take in her words, and then - first, John - one by one they throw their heads back to roar with laughter, and those near enough reach down to thump Regina on the shoulder until Robin worries they’ll break her._

_Or he would worry, if Regina wasn’t grinning just as broadly as the rest, and pausing in the midst of it all to catch his eye and flick a victorious smirk straight to him._

_Your move, it says, clear as day, and Robin means to take it._

_“I wasn’t eaten by bears,” he protests, loudly, fighting the noise of the barroom. “I’m not - I’m sitting right here. This is plainly ridiculous.”_

_“I don’t know, Robin, that was a yarn you won’t find easily matched.”_

_“Matchless, indeed,” he mutters, irked that everyone seems satisfied - overjoyed, even - by Regina’s version of events. “Are none of you curious as to how it truly ended? There’s plenty more to tell.”_

_Regina sighs. “Plenty more to be spoiled by your telling of it, you mean.”_

_Robin rolls his eyes, fondly, at her stubbornness, and he drops his voice low to meet hers, as though they’re passing codes through tight spaces… that just happen to be inhabited by several large men._

_“Bears, really?” he asks, to tease her, and she kicks him sharply in the ankle._

_He smiles, sees it reflected in her eyes, and begins to speak once more._

...

Regina nudged him along, guiding him by the arm when he began to drift, and then her touch stayed there, pressing his elbow, and Robin knew he must be well and truly pathetic when she let him take her hand instead.

Somehow she had collected his bow and quiver along the way, and that he had no recollection of being so disarmed should concern him more, but Robin couldn't think much past his own feet, and his need to keep them.

The forest was little more than a swirl around him, and for all he knew they were just as likely to be headed for the Queen’s dungeons as for his own camp. The thought, oddly, made him laugh, and in his humor he stumbled into Regina so that they both tripped sideways, landing ankle-deep in water that immediately flooded his boots.

This made him laugh all the harder ( _it was the fever_ , he would insist later, as Regina scowled over the memory of dragging him upstream), and Regina didn’t stop cursing once until he was abruptly tumbled into a bed - not his, it turned out.

He rolled his face into the ball of fabric that formed a pillow, and it smelled of her. Forest-y, in a pleasant way, and other things he could not discover names for.

“Don’t sleep yet,” she ordered from the doorway, and Robin nodded, holding his eyes open, though he didn’t think he had much choice in the matter. He watched dark shapes play against the ceiling and wondered if they were shadows or spots in his vision.

And he must have fallen asleep after all, for Regina had to shake him to call his attention back, passing him a steaming cup and steadying his head and hands while he drank.

“Foul tea,” he rasped as he slumped into the pillow, making a face as the taste lingered. “Did no one ever teach you to brew a proper cuppa?”

Her eyes darkened at that, and he had pried too deep there, rattled something loose, and he would apologize but Regina simply said, inscrutably, “I never said it was tea.”

Robin had time (just) to wonder if he had fallen under her bewitching, delivered himself so neatly into the hands of his rival, but he didn’t want to believe it of her ( _didn’t_ , really) if only because the way she was looking at him felt more protective than predatory, and she could have killed him without such effort ten times over by now.

And then his vision folded inward, shrinking and centering on the oval that was her face, and he knew no more.

The line between sleeping and waking bent meaninglessly during those days - Robin would think this only later, when he had come back to himself, and after a passage of eons and yet no time at all, he woke enough for the shapes of the room to straighten themselves into recognizable objects again.

Fur-trimmed coat hanging from a hook in the wood, apples on the stool, and Regina asleep by his bedside, accidentally draped over him in a way she would be embarrassed by, and so Robin too felt as though he must look away.

He searched for water with his fingers, not wanting to disturb her, brushing up and over the length of the bedside table until he touched glass. He managed to get it to his lips without spilling, and though the water within was flat and warm it roused him some, and his mind turned to worry over just how badly he had overstayed his welcome.

Not that Regina had _welcomed_ him into her home, exactly, in the first place.

There was no hope of him slipping off unnoticed even if he could stand unaided - and he rather doubted that after tiring himself by merely reaching for a glass of water - so he would have to face Regina and all her scowling, endeavor to thank her when they had barely said a civil word to each other, before he could be on his way.

Setting the emptied glass back on the table proved more challenging than he had anticipated, and in the process he caught his sleeve on some papers stacked there and pulled them into his lap (narrowly missing Regina’s head) before he could right them.

He reordered them as best he could without looking - he had no desire to invade her personal spaces more than he already had - but he caught glimpses of familiar papers as his fingers worked to realign their edges, and it was enough to slow him, to attend to these things of hers more carefully than he should.

There was her face staring out from a wanted poster, and then his own (now bearing a inked-in rakishly thin moustache that made him resemble Lord Broadmoor), and lists upon lists of herbs, as though Regina had tried to catalogue every leaf and blossom in the forest itself.

The last paper held a smaller listing of ingredients, a recipe for some curative or restorative, and the bitterness of her ‘tea’ finally made sense. Valerian, willow bark, honey, a question mark smudged after hellebore, and the checklist went on to name herbs Robin had heard of only in songs, so rare were they said to be - to gather all these things in this season would require an unfathomable amount of risk and expense (or thievery, maybe), and he surveyed Regina properly for the first time since he had woken, suddenly longing to touch her and determine she was real.

As if in response to his thoughts, she turned in her sleep, rolling closer to his knees until she had bared her front and her face (half-obscured still by hair Robin had never seen loose before) to him.

And a shirt, a bit of mending, laid under one arm, something she must have been working at as she had fallen asleep. All of its buttons were torn out, and Robin could pick out three of them scattered amongst the furrows of his blanket, and hidden near the seam of the shirt was something that looked frighteningly like an old arrow hole, hedged with rust-black.

He would not have thought her a mender, this one, but here Regina was, spending days and nights of her careful attentions on making worn clothes and… and _himself_ whole again.

Impulse guided him to reach out (past her sleeping hand, though he would press it) and, with great tenderness, pluck a single button for his own and disappear it into his hand.

It was a magician’s trick - well, a pickpocket’s - and he knew she would mark its absence, quietly begged forgiveness for the time she would waste searching floor and blankets before giving it up as lost and choosing another, as he had chosen this.

_Hers._

If he were a better man, he would wake her.

(He had never been that man.)

_Robin pulls a button, flat and wooden and wholly unremarkable,, out of his breast pocket with an air of great significance, and everyone, especially Regina, rolls their eyes._

_“It’s a button, Locksley, let it go,” Alan counsels from beside him as another lad, genuinely puzzled, asked the table, “Who steals a button?”_

_“I liked you so much better when you were unconscious.”_

_Robin grins at her all the same, all charm for teasing the confession out of her. “Ah, so you do like me.”_

_“Liked, past tense, and a good deal of that was because I thought you were dying.” Regina says flatly and turns to John conspiratorily. “You should have seen the way he was carrying on. Dramatics to rival any mummers’ play.”_

_“Aye, lass, I’ve seen ’em myself. He took a splinter in his palm once, and you'd've thought the world was endin’ by the way he moaned over it!”_

_“John, that was an_ arrow _.”_

_They both shrug off his words, confirming that the Merry Men quite prefer Regina’s story to the truth of the matter. There’s much joking and laughing at Robin’s expense, and he allows it for the glint in Regina’s eye, for the color in her cheeks that signals pleasure at finally having cracked his men to become one of their number in more than name._

_She has worried for it for some time, that the men have found her strange among them, that they keep her company for love of Robin alone, and now perhaps she has quietened that fear with the way they clap her on the back and ask her for the medicinal properties of ale and another story in the same breath._

_They leave the tavern to return to their tent, and Regina hangs onto his arm, wobbly-stepped with drink and happiness as she crows at her success (as much as she would ever crow)._

_It is fitting, somehow, that Robin is the one to take charge of her this time, leading her home and repaying the favor she never sought to collect._

_He can’t resist. “You are aware that that’s not actually the story of how we met, right?”_

_“Tell me,” she says muzzily, contentedly, leaning her head into his shoulder, and he slows his step for her._

_There are so many things he must tell to set forth their story in its entirety - the first time she interrupted him in the middle of a job, the first time he chased her, the gold, the danger, the kiss stolen beneath the apple tree._

_He wonders if (how) she will remember this tomorrow._

_And so he begins with the way their story must always begin, when Regina won’t glare at him for his sentimentality and gentle flirting:_

_“I didn’t know it at the time, when I slipped into the serving passageway under our Lord Sheriff’s manor, but that was the night I would meet destiny in the form of one Regina Mills - sex goddess,_ actual _goddess, and the one true bandit of Sherwood Forest…”_


End file.
